Finding Meaning in Meaninglessness
There’s a concept I came across not long ago known as ‘Ikigai’. It’s a Japanese philosophy, on how to find your meaning in life. Ikigai is what you call an activity that:
1. You are good at
2. You can be paid for
3. You love doing and
4. The world needs you to do.
When you’ve found something that fits all 4 criteria, you have achieved your meaning in life.
I think it’s important for me to tell you at this point that I’m an atheist. I wasn’t always an atheist, I was very devout for the majority my life, but now I am not. It’s not a label I acquired easily, I refused to accept it for a long time because of the negative connotations it brings. I now have accepted myself, and my cynicism.
Going from being pious to becoming an atheist, there are a few fundamental principles that I needed to accept. The one that really got me upset, what brought me right to the edge of depression, was that there was no longer meaning in my life. When I was religious, I devoted my life to my religion, to finding my way into heaven. Having tossed that to the side, I had found myself with a hole in my heart, and it’s very common to find people who find meaning in their religion and their spirituality.
I am an atheist, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have respect for religion. If people can find meaningfulness in their religion, that is beautiful to me. For me, I decided not to let the meaninglessness of life control my emotions any longer, and I decided that I needed to find my own meaning of life. It’s very liberating when you realise you have control over what your purpose should be, and I spent many years exploring different avenues to find my meaning.
For a long time, I thought about what career I wanted to pursue. I have a huge interest in education, and many thoughts on education reform, so I thought about going in to education administration as my purpose. I have a huge interest in politics and writing, so I thought I’d find my purpose in political journalism. I have a huge interest in media, so I thought I’d find meaning in being a producer or a director. They all felt fulfilling, but none of them really made me feel like it was worth devoting my whole life too.
Coming across Ikigai, I realised that devoting your whole life to one thing might not make sense at all. I’ve always enjoyed looking at the barebones, the principles, the derivatives, of things. I think the best way to understand things is to break them down to their core principles and understand them that way. Happiness and meaning have always been elusive concepts, but Ikigai displayed a very basic and simple version of the core concepts of finding meaning in your life.
Ikigai Diagram
I’ll concede Ikigai might be an oversimplified view of meaning in your life, however it did make me question a lot of the things I thought about life. I look around at my own life, and the lives of people around me, and I wondered why they allowed themselves to be unhappy. I see people who are in jobs that make them unhappy, or relationships that make unhappy, living
in places that make them unhappy, etc. What I’ve found is that there are two things that keep people in unhappy situations.
The first, and most powerful, is obligation. Obligation exists mainly due to culture and traditions. Growing up in a Pakistani household, raised in Australia, I noticed one very striking difference in the family structures between the two cultures. The majority of my Australian friends had divorced parents, whereas almost none of my Pakistani friends had divorced parents. And yet, in the households with single parents or step parents, it seemed that things felt much happier. Obligation keeps people in relationships they don’t want, whether it be cultural pressure that discourages separation, or the obligation to stay together for the sake of children. Some people feel obligated to take careers they don’t want to appease their family, or to live lifestyles they loathe to appease their cultures and heritage.
The other is ease. Both of my parents find no meaning in their careers, yet they stick in them because they don’t have any other options. It would take a lot of effort and resources we don’t have to go back to university, learn new skills, and explore new career paths. It wouldn’t be impossible to learn new skills, to adapt and upgrade, it would just be very difficult. Here we see a sense of priority, short-term security rather than long-term happiness.
I want to be happy. If you want to be happy, you need to throw away obligation and ease in order to prioritise your happiness and your purpose. If you lose interest in your career, then move on to something else, no matter how much effort it takes to do so. If you find that you no longer feel like you are living and are just existing, then you are doing something wrong and you need to look for what needs to be changed. Change it.
After all, what’s the point of having life if it isn’t worth living?
Story Teller: Muraad Ahmad
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